The Rebound Effect

Horses embody beauty and freedom. They gallop with their manes freely flowing, emanating grace that courses through peoples’ minds, and representing an iconic symbol of elegance. Many people cherish the opportunity of owning a horse, but others, like greedy business owners, immorally seek profit by exploiting these elegant animals. Breed associations represent a certain breed and, for a fee, can register a horse in the breed book, giving it a greater value, allowing it to compete in many specialized shows, and raising its value. These breed industries monopolizes the breeding industry by having only one association per breed. As a result, they charge a lot of money to recognize horses. Entrance fees can easily reach a thousand dollars, but decrease severely for younger horses, prompting breeders to produce more and then select a foal out of the crop, instead of testing just one horse and registering after it has aged and proven itself. Breed associations register foals and profit from the money generated by entrance due. The big breed associations like the American Quarter Horse Association and the American Jockey Club do not care about the fate of the horses registered through its process, only the dues and profit collected through the registration. In a puppy-mill-like breeding program, slaughter presents itself as an easy way to dispose of foals that have not met the standards of the competition, and many owners choose this route for young horses with defects or who lack the abilities to win in the show ring. Because breed industries produce a greater supply of foals than there is demand, these rejects go to slaughter, which causes their meat and byproducts to pollute the environment. This leads beautiful animals to a horrendous demise, not only tragic in their own right, but causes a severe damage to the environment.

The breed industries promote over breeding among their members’ stock, and supports slaughter for disposal of the resulting unwanted horses. When breeding horses known to excel in their chosen disciplines, many horse owners expect the best from their stock, and thus often mass produce foals in an attempt to find that one legendary, career-making horse. Many horse breeders believe “you have to breed 100 horses to produce two good horses,” and this wasteful attitude towards these animals causes people to over breed mediocre horses instead of spending the money to create a good horse from high quality stock (Duckworth). Searching for that miracle horse, many breeders of performance horses feel intense pressure to accelerate the process and leave breeding up to luck instead of guaranteed stallion lines. The horses that do not make the cut become earmarked for slaughter, like the 170 rejected race horses that Ernie Paragallo, brutally neglected on his property while they waited for a trailer to the slaughter house in late 2009. Sold across the border to Canada, Mexico and even Europe, “kill buyers”, those who buy horses for slaughter, these unfortunate horses set a bottom price. The America Quarter Horse Association, promoted as the “largest breed industry in the world ,” spent $1 million on lobbying for horse slaughter to continue and to keep its pockets full from the registration money of all the mass produced, and often unwanted, young prospects deemed unsuitable (Treadway). Mass producing foals without any demand for them floods the market with unwanted weanlings, causing these young horses find their way into unsavory conditions, namely on a trailer bound for slaughter.

Once the kill buyers obtain these horses, the slaughter process begins by transporting them to slaughter outside the U.S. In preparation for the auction process, many of the horses have drugs and stimulants injected into their system to make them appear sound during the run through and bidding. Because of the current economic situation, however, many people decreased spending on recreational activities, like horse owning. The small market for these untested and barely trained horses diminishes because of the added financial strain of paying for training and horse care. Sold to kill buyers from out of the country, the horses suffer horrendously on long trailer rides, often for days in cramped, squalid conditions without food and water, homage to the way the Nazi’s transported their victims to the gas chambers. Recently, Justin Harvey embodied this disgusting transport when he abandoned seven horses in a trailer on the side of an interstate without sustenance in temperatures of over 130 degrees. Horses dying in transit occur commonly. As Harvey admits, “it’s common on killer type hauls” (Pommier). The unwanted horses become subjected to inhumane deaths by foreign countries’ slaughter processes. Since the closing of American slaughter houses, the number of horses exported into Mexico has increased by 310%. In contrast to the captive bolt that paralyzes and causes brain death before the butchering procedure begins, the process legal in America, slaughter houses in Mexico line horses up and cut their throats with a knife, leaving them to slowly bleed to death and often they remain conscious as the workers skin and butcher them. Because of the outcry of public disapproval towards breeders that knowingly submit their horses to these horrors, horses sold at auction rarely have identification. This lack of medical records endangers the public that consume and live by slaughter plants. The slaughter of these animals creates many problems. The excess waste from these plants cause them to expel blood and tissue without sanitizing it first, contaminating the surrounding area.

The residual drugs left in the horses now infect the meat and byproducts at the slaughter house, poisoning the surrounding environment and the local inhabitants. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved many drugs used in horses for human consumption, especially those used to make them appear sound, mainly Phenylbutazone, or Bute. Bute masks symptoms of pain, lameness, and arthritis in horses, making it a clear choice to use in the auction run through. Because of the relatively short traveling time from the auction to slaughter, many horses go through untested and contaminate the meat with the harmful chemicals they harbor. “NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN HORSES FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION” is clearly printed on every container (FDA). Ivermeticin, a popular wormer and integral part of any worming rotation, has a long-time ban by the FDA. Any domestic horse would have ingested the drug at some point. On big breeding farms, a spread of worms cause tremendous devastation – both financially and healthily – so worming takes places religiously. The detrimental effects that these drugs and many others have remain un-cataloged and harmful. Because of the lack of identification given from the mass breeders, people who buy and consume horse meat remain unaware of the dangers they ingest. This toxic situation not only impacts the meat, but also affects the byproducts: hooves, hair, skin, blood and organs. Jell-O and perfumes made by these products also become infected. The blood also caused a lot of concern for the public when U.S. horse slaughter plants opened, including Dallas Crown in Kaufman, TX: “The slaughterhouse constantly flooded the town’s drinking water with blood and tissue – literally coming out of the taps – and had never complied with city water standards, or paid fines” (Allin). Horse blood, notoriously hard to treat, creates a major concern as horses have twice as much blood per pound than cows and other livestock. This surplus of blood doesn’t respond to the bacterial agents used on cows’ blood, and hardly ever gets to levels clean enough to release back into the environment, leaving pollutants that wash into water ways and soak into ground water and taints it, causing devastating damage.

When big breed industries fail to inspire their members to breed responsibly, they create a horrific chain of events that pollutes the environment and hurts innocent people. As a $40 million industry, the exporting of horses for slaughter remains a deplorable business that aims only at making money. By sending the gruesome problem of horse slaughter overseas, the American government has failed to squash it at its core – the mass breeders. Displacing the problem has not resolved the issue; merely sent it farther away from home. The breed industries do themselves and the animals they serve a disservice in their search for greater profits. Horse slaughter causes a huge impact on the environment. The chemicals that leak into the ground water cause contamination for generations, and when banned drugs poison the Earth, the results frighten. The drugs in the meat, as well as the environment, cause untold damage to people around the world. Horse slaughter’s long lasting effects, like in Kaufman, Texas, does not stop when the plants close. Recovery takes years, burdening the planet with unnecessary filth.




Works Cited

Allin, Jane. When Horse Slaughter Comes To Town. International Fund for Horses, Mar. 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.
"Behind the Scenes – America’s Horse Daily." America’s Horse Daily: the Complete Source for All Things Horse. Word Press, 13 May 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
Drape, Joe. "State Police Charge Horse Breeder with Animal Cruelty." The New York Times. 10 Apr. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
Duckworth, Barbara. "Horse Breeding Industry Faces Crisis." The Western Producer. 26 Aug. 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
FDA. "FR Doc 03-4741." U S Food and Drug Administration. 28 Feb. 2003. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
FDA. "NADA Number: 134-314." FDA. US Department of Health and Human Services. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
"Get the Facts on Horse Slaughter." The Humane Society of the United States. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
"Horse Slaughter FAQ's." Equine Protection Network. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
Lin, Doris. "Horse Slaughter Arguments." About.com. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
"Medications and US Horsemeat." Veterinarians for Equine Welfare. Feb. 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
National Agricultural Statistics Service, and USDA. "Horse Slaughter Statistics." Animal Welfare Institute. 21 Sept. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
Pommier, Michael. "Local Man Arrested for Animal Cruelty." Fort Scott Tribune: Newspaper Serving Fort Scott, Kansas. 14 Sept. 2010. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .
Treadway, Don. "Welcome." AQHA. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .